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Morning Fix: Mike Huckabee as Rodney Dangerfield

Why does Mike Huckabee get no respect? Photo by Gregory Smith, AP

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is the Rodney Dangerfield of the Republic party: he gets no respect.

To wit:

* In a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll Huckabee led the field of potential 2012 Republican primary voters -- ahead of people like former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

* Huckabee defeated Romney, who is widely seen as the 2012 Republican frontrunner, in the 2008 Iowa caucuses and came within a whisker -- actually 14,743 votes -- of beating John McCain in the 2008 South Carolina primary.

* Huckabee has been as active as any potential 2012 candidate so far in 2009, doing four events for Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor in Virginia as well as an event for Bob Vander Plaats, who is running for governor in Iowa in 2010, and a handful of other conservative candidates and causes.

"Huck PAC is off to another great year," said Sarah Huckabee, the governor's daughter and the executive director of his leadership political action committee. "We have continued to build on our strengths as a grassroots organization and through that built a team of more than 5,000 volunteers with representatives in all 50 states."

So, is the political world missing the boat (again) on Mike Huckabee?

Yes and no.

Yes, in two ways.

First, Huckabee does have a devoted core group of supporters built during the 2008 campaign who will almost certainly stick with him should he run again in 2012. And, those followers tend to be white evangelical Protestants (he held a 21-point lead over Romney among that group in the Post poll), the group who comprise much of the Republican party's base and have a heavy hand in picking the nominee.

Huckabee has cared for and fed that base since the election -- primarily through his television and radio shows. Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dick Wadhams compared Huckabee's media presence to the radio addresses delivered by Ronald Reagan during the 1970s.

"The impact of those commentaries seemed to escape notice by the media of that era and perhaps we're witnessing the same thing happening now with Huckabee," said Wadhams. "He will have been on the air for more than two years when we enter 2011 so its hard for me to see how he could not be a serious candidate in 2012."

Second, Huckabee's 2008 run left good feelings among rank and file Republicans -- including those who didn't vote for him. The most obvious comparison is former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) who surprised Democrats by his strong showing in the 2004 primaries, wound up as the vice presidential nominee, and eventually ran for president a second time. Huckabee is both well known and well liked by most Republicans -- an advantage not to be underestimated.

The "no" argument may ultimately be more persuasive, however.

Huckabee's rise during the 2008 primaries was fueled in large part by the fact that the so-called major candidates -- Romney, McCain, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Sen. Fred Thompson (Tenn.) -- all ignored him, believing that voters would not be wooed by a bass playing pastor.

No candidate will make that mistake with Huckabee again. If he does decide to run, he can expect a far more aggressive effort against him by several of his rivals who will be interested in co-opting his support among social conservatives.

While Huckabee enjoyed the status as the lone true social conservative in the race -- with the exception of Thompson who got in late and exited early -- in 2008, he will likely be fighting with Palin and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for the social conservative mantle in 2012.

There is also little evidence that Huckabee has solved the major hole in his candidacy in 2008: a highly professionalized organization and fundraising operation

Huckabee's rise in 2008 was remarkable for any number of reasons but one of the largest was the fact that he had a fraction of the staff that other candidates carried and raised nowhere near the cash of his main rivals. As a result, there was little long-term planning to capitalize on his Iowa victory and he ultimately ran out of cash to run serious campaigns in later primary states.

Volunteers, which Huckabee has in abundance, can help to a point. But, ultimately, any national campaign needs people who have been in the scrum before and know how to put together the pieces of a campaign.

Huckabee is clearly overshadowed at the moment by Palin and others. But, if the 2008 election taught us anything, it's that he should not be underestimated.

Biden, Holder to Announce Police Funding: Vice President Joe Biden and Attorney General Eric Holder will announce $1 billion in economic stimulus funds dedicated to the hiring and re-hiring of of police officers today in Philadelphia, according to an Administration source. The money will be parceled out via grants in all 50 states and will lead to the hiring of nearly 4,700 officers for three years. "A big part of the Recovery Act is about building communities -- making them as strong as they can be, allowing every American family to live a better life than the one they are leading now," said Biden. Cynics will almost certainly note that the announcement of funds comes just days after President Barack Obama said that the Cambridge police department had "acted stupidly" in the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. last week -- a comment that set off a firestorm. But, the broader takeaway should be how critical it is to the Administration to prove that the economic stimulus is having an effect at a practical level for voters.

Marshall Huddles With DSCC: North Carolina Secretary of State Elaine Marshall sat down with officials from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee last week to talk about the possibility of a challenge to Sen. Richard Burr (R) next November, according to a source familiar with the meeting. Marshall, who was re-elected to a fourth term to her current post last November, ran once before for the U.S. Senate -- placing third in a 2002 Democratic primary won by former Clinton White House chief of staff Erskine Bowles. Marshall, whose claim to political fame is that she beat stock car racing legend Richard Petty (R) in 1996, is far from Democrats' first choice in the contest. The DSCC and White House aggressively recruited state Attorney General Roy Cooper only to be rebuffed; Rep. Heath Schuler also turned down recruitment efforts at least twice while Rep. Mike McIntrye is allegedly considering the race. Democrats point to polling that shows Burr is vulnerable and note that Sen. Kay Hagan was far from the party's first choice against then Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R) in 2008.

Simon for Whitman: Bill Simon, the California Republican gubernatorial nominee in 2002, threw his support behind former eBay president Meg Whitman's bid for the GOP nod in 2010. Of Whitman, Simon said: "Her beliefs and experience make her the best candidate to lead California's economic recovery." Simon is a well-known figure in fiscal conservative circles; his father is a former Secretary of the Treasury and the two men co-founded an investment firm in the late 1980s. Simon defeated former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, the early favorite, in the 2002 gubernatorial primary but lost narrowly to Gov. Gray Davis (D) in that year's general election. Simon has stayed active in politics, having served as California chairman for former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's 2008 presidential bid. State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Rep. Tom Campbell are also seeking the Republican nod.

Gillibrand's Smart Gambit on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": Showing some political savvy, appointed Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) announced Monday that the Senate Armed Services Committee has agreed -- at her urging -- to hold a hearing re-examining the "don't ask, don't tell" policy about gays in the military. "This policy is wrong for our national security and wrong for the moral foundation upon which our country was founded," said Gillibrand. Her advocacy for an issue that has become a touchstone in the gay community should help bolster her liberal credentials for her coming primary fight against Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Gillibrand, who held a conservative Upstate New York seat for three years before being elevated to the Senate, must prove to liberals that her past conservative positioning on gun control and immigration is behind her. This move takes her some part of the way down that road.

Sullivan Heads to Texas: South Carolina Republican operative Terry Sullivan is moving to Texas to manage Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's primary challenge to Gov. Rick Perry in 2010 -- one of a number of moves the campaign formalized on Monday. "I jumped at the chance to help Senator Hutchison who I consider a friend," said Sullivan in an e-mail to the Fix. "Plus, the fact that I get to spend 7 months kicking around Rick Perry's record of double speak...well that's just the icing on the cake." Hutchison also announced that Scott Howell & Company, as expected, will play a major role in the campaign with Howell, Heath Thompson and Todd Harris all set to spend considerable time working for Hutchison over the next year.

Ryan Endorses Fisher: Ohio Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher (D) continued to stockpile establishment support for his 2010 Senate bid, announcing Monday that Rep. Tim Ryan was supporting his candidacy. Ryan, who was encouraged to consider a Senate run in his own right, called Fisher a "tireless advocate for the hardworking families of northeast Ohio." Ryan joins Gov. Ted Strickland and Rep. Zack Space as supporters of Fisher. Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner continues to insist she will make the race but her lagging fundraising says otherwise. Former Republican Rep. Rob Portman is the favorite for the Republican nod but car dealer Tom Ganley is also running.

Voting for Alan Keyes doesn't have anything to do with showing non-racism. Yeah Keyes is black, but Keyes is also a flaming lunatic and his lunaticity is so vastly more profound than his race that to vote for him says so much about the voter's unsound judgment that Keyes' race isn't even an issue. It's not ever tertiary.

Before I got into Linux I used to butt heads with the Linux community and their paranoia around Bill Gates. These ninnies would insist that Microsoft was spying on them, sending data about their personal lives to Redmond. I would point out that I was working on Windows myself from my office at Microsoft, I had access to source code, and there was nothing like that going on. I could have saved my breath.

"How can you be ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN there isn't some code you haven't seen?"

Where it got really bizarre: they believed that Microsoft would fire any employee who ran Linux at home. I pointed out that I was running Linux from my office IN Microsoft as well as at home, and I still had a job. This was a direct contradiction of their beliefs .. no matter, they still believed it.

No amount of information will stop this birth certificate conspiracy theory.

colinashley, the thing about the birth certificate is that there actually is no room for debate. One side has facts, and the other has an adamant refusal to acknowledge facts. A debate isn't possible in that situation.

Or would you debate a man running around in circles on a sunny day screaming that the sky is falling?

hey colinashley you must be new here. Read this place for a while and get back to me later on who exactly is doing the "name calling" around here.

As for the great backlash to come, you uh people have been screaming about this backlash for thirty years. Just like when you screamed about how Clinton was going to trash the economy and that Iraqis would welcome invaders. You don't know what the hell you're talking about.

As for "political correctness," you can pine for the good old days of calling people queers and ni66ers as wistfully as you want, but they aren't coming back.

Some of you Liberals are beyond parody! You constantly seek to shut down debate by name calling. You've got away with it for too long under the cover of political correctness but the tide is at last starting to change...

If gays can vote for McCain-Palin and still be gay then racists can vote for Keyes and still be racist. If bigots decide that some party position e.g. abortion is more important to them than their bigotry, they can make a choice just like anyone else. JakeD remains an unrepentant racist, as his birther posts here establish beyond any doubt.

Obama defeated Keyes in his Senate race and trounced him almost as thoroughly as if he'd run unopposed. Keyes is a major nutbar and is leaping from one hysterical conspiracy to another, an orgy of paranoia and hate. The guy is seriously deranged, but then he always has been.

Of course it's racism, chrisfox, but the point is, it's driven them insane. It's like Jim Jones or something -- they're a cult of crazy people,

==

Yeah but instead of getting ninety days' observation they go on the radio and post crap in public blogs.

I mean, we knew that having a black president was going to piss them off, was going to bring out the assassin wannabes, but the weirdo birth certificate derangement and the black helicopter stuff is just bizarre. I've always despised the extension of the first amendment to protect liars, I think this is one case we really need to just crack down. The evidence has been presented, they refuse to accept it. Case closed. Fire them from their government jobs at the very least.

When the eligibility of George Romney and John McCain were questioned, the questions were dismissed without a peep and that was that.

Yet you fanatics have so little confidence in your country and are so deranged with the fact of a nonwhite president that you've lostg all sense and reason. What sort of conspiracy would be necessary to squeak an ineligible president through the vetting, and how long ago would it have had to begin? Did Obama's mother know he would run for president someday?

You guys don't even make sense.

As for your vaunted "traditional values," you don't get to take that dodge. Your traditional values support persecuting gays. You don't get to do that anymore, just as you don't get to lynch black men or own them as slaves. Times change. Yesterday's traditional values are today's unacceptable bigotry. Don't like it? Jump out a high window.

@chrisfox8...typical liberal speak. Anyone who simply wants to see clear evidence of Obama's long form birth certificate is labelled a racist; as is anyone who reports a possible break-in and describes the person as being black. Anyone who questions Romney's Conservative record and is labelled a mormon hater. Anyone who believes in traditional values and is labelled a homophobe (@Milbrooks27 9:03am). Anyone who believes in Intelligent Design islabelled a knuckle dragger...I could go on and on and on. Got to hand it to the Liberals, they have been remarkably effective at projecting their intolerance on to Conservatives who end up constantly on the defensive.

Fortunately, more Conservatives are standing up and calling out the hypocrisy of the left! For instance, it was great to see Glenn Beck today call out Obama for being a racist.

Huckabee has two years to solve his 2008 organizational shortcomings. I do not think he is qualified to be President, but I like him. He has a good public personality. That's never a bad thing for a politician. Huckabee's biggest problem is with the business wing of the Republican Party, they feared him more than Obama or Clinton.

If Huckabee can put together an organization and reach out to the business conservatives and/or the libertarians, he could put together a winning coalition for the nomination. But things will have to be pretty awful in 2012 to beat Obama. No matter how you look at it, the Republicans have nothing but minor league prospects for the Presidential nomination. To any independent, Palin will look like nothing but a quitter. Pawlenty is boring. While friendly and a great guy, Huckabee graduated from bible college. Newt will never win the Republican nomination: his personal life is too messy compared to Pawlenty, Huckabee and even Palin. Romney will never win conservative voters so he'll never win the nomination and even if he does he comes off as a used car salesman on TV. And things would have to be really good economically before the American people would elect someone who made his millions moving American jobs offshore. Jindal has to prove he's graduated from the Junior High AV club. Let him season for a while. Charlie Crist is too liberal for Republicans and US Senator is not the place to win the Presidency anyway. It has only been Obama and Kennedy.

If you want a serious race for the White House wait until 2016. Clinton and Biden will be seen as too old by the general electorate by then so both parties should be wide open. If it wasn't for Hutchinson being 73 in 2016 I'd say watch out for her, but that's too old too. I'm still betting on Huntsman changing parties and being the Democratic nominee in 2016.

Some lawyer was on the radio this morning about the birther thing. It was really eerie and more than a little creepy. Any time the guy was presented with a fact, he would simply deny it. An official of Hawaii public health has issued several statements about the documentation, says there is no doubt and nothing there, and this guy was just weaseling and equivocating and trying to call out some "discrepancies" between various statements months apart (they all said the same thing but, unlike the birthers who argue here, she was able to use different words at different times).

There's no doubt in my mind that what we are seeing in this fanatic conspiracy movement is racism pure and simple, atop a steaming heap of resentment by sore losers who simply can't live with the fact that THEIR SIDE LOST.

huckabee could NEVER win in the general election for many reasons. Here's one: making his VILE joke last summer about somebody pointing a gun at Obama! Can't you just see how swell that would be having this gaffe-disaster (and racist?) as the GOP nominee on stage with Obama—the recipient of huck’s SICK joke?! At the presidential debates the booing at huck from the audience would be endless, and of course, the Repubs would lose the election AGAIN due to outrage over the GOP’s candidate.

"DDAWD: How boring would it be if we are came to the table with the same viewpoints. If this blog was made up of just conservatives, I would go looking for another blog where people share disagreements about policy, politics and other good stuff. I think JakeD is totally out there on that birth certificate nonsense, but i have not noticed him be insulting, I welcome is different perspective."

Well, maybe if you weren't such a strong advocate of cannibalism, I'd be more inclined to agree with you.

For gods sake, stop arguing with jaked about his nonsense. If you want to mock him for being the soulless idiot he his, feel free. But why argue with a a creature so essentially dishonest?

Here's how he argues: he defends his talking about Obama's birth certificate because it is a thread topic. He doesn't mention that it has nothing to do with CC's post, and he himself made it a "thread topic" when he brought it up himself apropos nothing in the very second comment. He doesn't care that this argument obviously makes no sense.

"I think you're correct. His folksy charm is appealing, and he can deliver a sharp attack with a smile that will be very effective, like "I can promise you that I will work hard for what we believe in, and that I'll never quit on you." In the primary fight last year, he stayed in it until he was mathematecally eliminated, then supported the party nominee. Primary voters will remember that - as a plus - while some of his potential opponents might leave room for doubt regarding their reliability to stick with it."

He also is very quick witted and funny. I don't know if he brought this out on the campaign trail, but he was fun on Stewart and Colbert.

As for sticking to it until the end, I wouldn't give him too much credit for that. Like the guy campaigned in the Cayman Islands. I'm pretty sure that's not a delegate rich area.

DDAWD: How boring would it be if we are came to the table with the same viewpoints. If this blog was made up of just conservatives, I would go looking for another blog where people share disagreements about policy, politics and other good stuff. I think JakeD is totally out there on that birth certificate nonsense, but i have not noticed him be insulting, I welcome is different perspective.

"@DDAWD: already tried that, as long as BB and m_i_a answer him he thinks he's one of the big dogs and keeps on yapping. They're the ones you need to get on board."

Honestly, I don't even care if jaked stays or leaves. MIA responds to him, but at least his responses are interesting and I can learn from them. It's much better than a bunch of responses saying how stupid the guy is and how he lives in his mom's basement and all that stuff.

Besides, the two aforementioned guys don't respond to him nearly enough for him to get his attention fix. If you and drindl stopped, that would clear things up vastly. Most likely he won't leave and most likely we're still going to get responses to him, but we're not going for a 100% fix, just an improvement.

@DDAWD: already tried that, as long as BB and m_i_a answer him he thinks he's one of the big dogs and keeps on yapping. They're the ones you need to get on board.

Lately he's not even trying, just the same stock phrases over and over. Sometimes I think he reall is a scriptbot, certainly wouldn't be at all hard to write a few dozen lines of Perl or Lua that could take his place.

AndyR3 writes, of Huck:
"I completely disagree with him on most of his policies, but he is a good politician especially in the arena of Iowa and SC GOP primaries. I would think that by July 2011 he will be the person to beat in Iowa."

I think you're correct. His folksy charm is appealing, and he can deliver a sharp attack with a smile that will be very effective, like "I can promise you that I will work hard for what we believe in, and that I'll never quit on you." In the primary fight last year, he stayed in it until he was mathematecally eliminated, then supported the party nominee. Primary voters will remember that - as a plus - while some of his potential opponents might leave room for doubt regarding their reliability to stick with it.

Huckabee is a charming folksy guy but behind that smile he's one of those same people who denies science, harbors bigotry against minorities and gays, believes in prayer, and would come to Washington with a retrograde agenda: turn the clock back to the 18th century. Tear down the progress we've made one painful step at a time. The unleashing of fundamentalism would open a violent and brutal final chapter in American history and we would probably not emerge from a fundamentalist presidency, Huck's or Palin's, in anything like the form we've had since we became a nation.

Happily there is little chance of this happening. So why do we keep getting these gushing pieces about these losers? Come on, ChrisC, give this crap a rest, let's forget about that stupid Palin woman, and let's forget about Mike Huckabee, and for that matter let's stop hearing about the next election when the last one is only months in the past. Bigger fish to fry.

Would you mind if I suggest you ignore him? Yeah, he's annoying, but if we could at least get rid of the deluge of responses every time he says something, that would make it a lot better by comparison. And you're perhaps the primary culprit.

Let's at least give it a trial period. If the board doesn't become noticeably more tolerable after a few weeks, then go back to bashing him.

>>I realize that you don't care, but we social conservatives cannot vote for a pro-choice candidate.

And intolerance for a difference of opinions will be the death of social conservatism. It honestly can't come soon enough.

And for that matter his less than overt social conservative stance is one of the reasons I would actually vote for Romney. Social conservatives are not who I'd turn to for a policy maker. I'd rather have someone concerned with running a country than someone devoted to making sure that the sancitity of marriage or other social issues that can be handled better than just banning them because they make you feel bad.

Huckabee became a guy who I just rolled my eyes at after he was on the Daily Show promoting his then-new book, where he argues that we could have a smaller government if everyone was just nicer to each other. Thats a level of naievte(sp) that I have a hard time dealing with.

Plus, as to the birther situation, CNN has already gone through the entire argument. Over and over again. The document released by Hawaii is the document they keep. They digitized their records in 2001, and got rid of all their paper records. The birth announcment was made in two local Hawaiian newspapers with names, addresses, and everything. Obama is a natural born citizen. Just because he's black, has a scary middle name, and comes from Hawaii does not mean that he must of been born in Indonesia or Kenya or the Moon or wherever else the birthers claim he was born. There is no credible way to claim that "there are still questions" about his birth-place. If, indeed, the Hawaiian document management system, the newspapers, and the released documents are false, then this is the most carefully managed 50 some-odd year conspiracy in American history.

Huckabee will be able to raise alot more money this time around. He is one of the most gifted speakers in the GOP and has a good track record as a governer that he can and will stand by. Plus he has the advantage that he got out before the proverbial s$%T hit the fan for state budgets around the country.

I completely disagree with him on most of his policies, but he is a good politician especially in the arena of Iowa and SC GOP primaries. I would think that by July 2011 he will be the person to beat in Iowa.

Can we PLEASE stop talking to JakeD??? It's obvious that he's just trying to screw up discussion, but yet the SAME people keep responding to him over and over again. We all KNOW he's a racist bigot. It doesn't need to be pointed out.

I could understand if it were people not familiar with the forum, but its the regulars who turn every ##$^ing post into the JakeD chat.

No doubt some Aryan out there is using this issue with malice. I simply want the historic truth. If Obama is not a natural-born citizen, that does not necessarily disqualify him from being a real American -- our Governor here in California was born in Austria -- that's all I'm asking about. I am not burning a cross on the White House lawn.

dcraven: It is not paranoia that is driving the "birthers." This is an attempt to delegitimize Obama's agenda. If they can get people to think that he is not a "real" American, then his policies cannot be good for America. I can't help but wonder if this is also an attempt to pander to the lowest common element in society. For better or worse, there are still people out there who cannot stomach the idea of a black man being president.

No "evidence" meaning his paternal grandmother never said he was born in what is Kenya today? If it is such a slam dunk case, why not release the LONG FORM birth certificate. I will not stop until then.

Jake D wrote:
What the The USA Today fails to mention is Hawaii law at the time allowed residents to register out-of-State births, so I don't doubt there is such a registration on file.

My Comment:

Give it a rest. We also have testimonial evidence of someone who knew both the Mother and the Doctor that delivered the baby remembering the birth. And the announcement in both Honolulu Papers. And the State of Hawaii (with a Republic Governor) confirming that the official document says that he was born in Hawaii. There is NO evidence of any kind going the other way. This is pure and simple paranoia.

I hope Huckabee blows Palin out of the water. They are both pretty similar, but Huckabee is just so less mean spirited. I was watching Palin's speech yesterday and I literally cringed at the part where she injected the military in the feud between her and the press. It was something I had read yesterday, but seeing the video was just chilling.

I'm not in love with Republican economic policy, but I really hate how little regard the party has for our troops. It's really disgusting.

Yep, can't argue with that both Huck and Palin are chasing after the same voters. If they both run, whoever loses Iowa will be knocked out. GOP has a better than even chance to win in 2012 as long as we don't blow it by nominating either Huck or Palin. If the economy still sucks in 2012, put all of your money on Romney.

vbhoomes writes
"BSIMON, I think you might be concerned with Obama losing moderates and indenpendents."

Its too soon to say. Personally I think the WH is on the right track & will have the results to prove it by 2012, so my analysis is influenced by that.

If I'm wrong & those groups start looking to the GOP for an alternative, Huckabee is not the candidate to which they'd be drawn. Huckabee's natural base has extensive overlap with Palin's. If they're both in the race a candidate like Romney will benefit.

I was initially favorable towards Huckabee but as the campaign progessed, I was totally turned off by his populist talk and his apparent belief he is Gods chosen one. He will never get my vote, BSIMON, I think you might be concerned with Obama losing moderates and indenpendents. People now feel decieved, he ran as post-partisan and post racial candidate, now we know he's just the typical hard core leftie who hates cops and jews.

JakeD - Oh, please! Give it a break. He is a U.S. citizen and no court is going to find differently. These conspiracy theories give opposition to Obama's policies a bad name. Go right ahead and believe it, if you want (I think it's nonsense), but keep it to yourself. It's counterproductive.

The State of Hawaii has not released Obama's LONG FORM birth certificate. This latest pronouncement is like NASA saying they have pictures from space showing the earth is round but refusing to release those as well. The question is why won't Obama simply allow the release, because I would "STFU" about it if he did.

blarg writes
" Huckabee is going to have the same problem. If he wasn't good enough to win in 2008, how can he win in 2012? "

On the one hand, that's a good point. On the other, McCain won largely by attracting moderates and/or independent voters - who seem to be leaving the party in droves. If the party is shrinking, doesn't that improve the chances of candidates that appeal primarily to the base?

mark_in_austin _ I've ben following this closely, too, and there are tens of thousands of "emergency" and "corporate" H1-B's still being issued. This country, unfortunately, has been drained so far of technology jobs that most of them are overseas, now. The latest trend is for foreign students to flood our university engineering and science programs (the schools get three to four times the money for foreign students). This has gotten so bad that 60% of the students in engineering, medical, and hard science programs are from either India or China. We have pretty much wasted our future as a nation.

I attended the ABA national employment law seminar last week in SF, NM and Saturday closed with recent developments in H-1B + I-9. I learned that in previous years all 55k H-1B visas were applied for on the first day of availablilty, April 1. This year, as of July 10, there were still plenty of available spaces. Slow econmy slows immigration it seems.

Also getting some credit for that is the "Employ American Workers Act" that was tied to TARP and mkakes it harder to employ foreigners if you take federal bail-out funds.

CC says that the most obvious comparison for Huckabee is John Edwards, who lost in 2004 but ran again in 2008. He leaves out the fact that Edwards was a distant third place in the Democratic race, lagging behind in both fundraising and polling, and dropped out after a few disappointing early primaries.

In 2004, Edwards was a promising young candidate with limited experience. In 2008, he still had limited experience, but now he wasn't fresh and young anymore. Edwards didn't do anything between 2004 and 2008 to make himself a better candidate. Huckabee is going to have the same problem. If he wasn't good enough to win in 2008, how can he win in 2012?

Actually, of all of the Republican candidates "out there" Huckabee probably had the best chance of defeating Obama. Contrary to the rat like screechings of drivel, he is a social moderate - not a racist and has worked actively to promote racial equality. He is a homophobe, however, and that pretty much ends it for me. On economic matters he is a genuine populists, unalterably opposed to "globalization", job outsourcing, throwing money at the Wall Street crooks, and allowing us to be overrun by illegal immigrants. Given the present state of joblessness and the "new" Democratic economic plan, "trickle down economics", so aptly defended by Obama's vast hordes of intellectual and moral gerbils, I think Huckabee can win. Of course, the average voter is a moron and regularly elects both Republican's and Democrat's that kill their children in worthless (and illegal) foreign wars, allows the government to come up with secret enemies lists that are so secret no one knows who's on them, ship our jobs and factories overseas, allow trade that ships over 90% raw materials and only 5.6% manufactured goods like some failed third world pig stye, hand Wall Street crooks to the keys to the Treasury, invite the worst corporate traitors in the country to visit at the White House for a photo op, gin up "health care" reform that doesn't do cost cutting, has no public option (except for illegals), and taxes us to pay for it.

The crucial element that was not directly addressed in the article was that fact that despite all Huckabee's humor and charm he was yet but a regional candidate, unable to even compete outside of the cultural south.

In addition to that he'll probably have to explain his economic liberalism this time around, excuse his more lavish spending as Arkansas governor than Bill Clinton, and to "justify" having granted more pardons and commutations than the previous 3 governors before him--including his early release (by 25 bloody years) of Wayne Dumond, a serial rapist, who went on to rape and then murder at least one more woman, a girl of 15 actually, all because Friar Huck was told that good ole boy Wayne had found Jesus in the joint!

So, Huck should be thankful for his television show because, if that were me who had that on his conscious, I don't think I'd be able to smile into the camera ever again.

Ask whether so-called "community policing" programs have been misused to create a nationwide civilian vigilante "Gestapo" that is violating the civil and human rights of unjustly "targeted" citizens...

Such weapons are being deployed to law enforcement nationwide under programs sponsored by DOJ, FEMA/Homeland Security, DOD, etc.

Press Biden and Holder on the constitutionality of this secret program's endorsement of the warrantless covert implantation of GPS devices on the vehicles of American citizens -- and the covert use of personal cellphones to track citizen "targets."

Ask whether this secret program of extrajudicial targeting and punishment encourages rogue behavior on the part of law enforcement...

...as appears to be the case in the Professor Gates police home invasion and arrest.

'Last Friday, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joined radical conspiracy theorist Alex Jones on his radio talk show for an interview. Jones has made a name for himself propagating conspiracies ranging from the claim that Bill Clinton planned the Oklahoma City bombings to the idea that the attacks on 9/11 were orchestrated by a cabal of American and Israeli government officials.

During the 30-minute interview about “nation ending stuff,” Gohmert used his opportunity on the Jones show to showcase his own odd anti-Obama conspiracy theories:

GOHMERT: We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens. They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early because they won’t get the treatment as early as they need. [...] I would rather stop this socialization of health care because once the government pays for your health care, they have every right to tell you what you eat, what you drink, how you exercise, where you live. [...] But if we’re going to pay 700 million dollars like we voted last Friday to put condoms on wild horses, and I know it just says an un-permanent enhanced contraception whatever the heck that is. I guess it follows that they’re eventually get around to doing it to us.

The outrageous claim that a public option in health care will kill people is becoming a popular meme within the GOP caucus, used also by members such as Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). But not to be outdone, Jones offered the congressman his own set of conspiracy theories and outlandish statements, many of which Gohmert agreed with:

JONES: Did you hear about the WH science czar calling for putting stuff in the water to sterilize us?

GOHMET: No, I had not heard that. [...]

GOHMERT: People are always willing to give up their liberty to get economic stability.

JONES: Look at Hitler.

GOHMERT: Absolutely. Boy that’s the best example, maybe the best example. […]

JONES: As the Time magazine headline said, we’ve almost got national health care. They’ve almost got eugenics control grid over us. Can you speak to your website, how we help you. In closing, the youth brigades, national service compulsory in a group outside the military under the Democratic party control in the city year in the red and black uniforms? [...] In closing, and we’re going to let you go sir, the youth brigades, national compulsory service, the Democrats have introduced those bills. Your take on that?

GOHMERT: Well you just referred to that point in history where this stuff has been done before. It was done in the 1930s and its not the only place its been done. It has been done throughout history.'

Marching toward the dustbin if history. When will a new party rise up on the ashes this defunt and delusional GOP?

The House resolution to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Hawaiian statehood -- which included language recognizing the state as President Obama's birthplace, in a none-too-subtle jab at the Birthers -- passed this evening by a 378-0 vote.

Among the Yes votes: Rep. Bill Posey (R-FL), the lead sponsor of the infamous "Birther Bill" to require presidential candidates to present their birth certificates, and who had previously said he wouldn't "swear on a stack of Bibles" that Obama is a natural-born American citizen. Several other co-sponsors of the Birther Bill also voted yes: Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Dan Burton (R-IN), John Culberson (R-TX), Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), Randy Neugebauer (R-TX), and Ted Poe (R-TX).

The historic nomination of the first woman from a major party in 2012 will overshadow anythimg Huckabee (or Romney, T-Paw, etc,) can do. Hillary had to compete against an historic first herself. It was also very "kind" of Mr. Cillizza to use a file photo of Gov. Huckabee. He's put on at least 30 pounds since the campaign. That's another "negative" in competing with Gov. Palin.

I think the problem with Huckabee in 2008 is that he didn't take his candidacy seriously. The win in Iowa was a bit of a surprise and he should have been able to build off his close second in the SC primary. Huckabee is very genial (and a 'wysiwyg' person) and I think you're right in that the other GOP candidates should ignore him at their own peril in 2012...

What the The USA Today fails to mention is Hawaii law at the time allowed residents to register out-of-State births, so I don't doubt there is such a registration on file. If it is so plain to everyone, then there shouldn't be any problem releasing the original LONG FORM birth certificate. Then we can all "move on". Thank you for bringing the subject up, Mr. Cillizza.